LAUSR

This series is warmly welcomed, since one in four general practitioner consultations are about mental, not physical, health. However, many of these cases cannot be dealt with by a prescription to a local gym club. Often these issues are serious: child sexual abuse, for instance, often long-hidden, which even when referred to a counsellor/psychotherapist may take a while to be talked about, while the general practitioner, with a time limit of 10 minutes, will not even hear about. I suggest that there should be a counsellor in every general practitioner surgery, or accessed from it, immediately available to take referrals from the general practitioner. This will avoid the prescription of antidepressants, and the long wait (often over six months) for referral to a psychiatrist. It might also avoid some suicides among young people.